When Flock 0.9 launched it was a pretty big overhaul, and now their next big milestone is Flock 1.0 which currently has a vague release date of Fall 2007. Honestly this is the dream browser for any heavy social network user out there, and hopefully they’ll pursue more of the less tech savvy people who use MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube because I can guarantee that they would absolutely love it.

I still believe that the best feature is the built-in feed reader, and after installing a nightly build of Flock 1.0 I had noticed that it is getting a pretty slick overhaul. As you can see in the screenshot above there is a lot of eye candy going on there, and the number of unread feed items are always prominently displayed in blue boxes next to the feed’s name. The only downside I see to such a design is that it doesn’t make it very easy for heavy reading since each line in the sidebar is a bit oversized, meaning you’ll probably only get to see a dozen or two feeds in the sidebar at a time.

The new feed reader is only one area that has been revamped, and here are some other things that will be coming in Flock 1.0:

Unfortunately all of these features do seem to come at a price, and you’ll be "making the payments" with your computer’s memory. Having tested out the nightly build of Flock 1.0 left me in dismay at how much RAM it could actually eat up. At startup the browser choked down 50MB of memory, and after just three tabs that had risen to over 75MB! Now I’ve had similar problems with Firefox, but Firefox consistently uses 30MB less memory than Flock…so I guess you now know what the real cost of Flock’s added features. Maybe they’ll throw a curve ball and have some helpful optimizations by the time Flock 1.0 makes its way out the door?

Glad to hear you’re excited about Flock 1.0; I’ve been playing with our early builds and they are really amazing. It’s going to be the best Flock yet.

To clear up the Private Beta/Nightlies issue: the nightly builds don’t currently have all the features activated (though they eventually will). The Private Beta is an announcement and download link that will go out to those who have signed up (probably before the nightlies get fully activated). After that, we will fully activate the nightlies and eventually stick a “Try Flock 1.0″ link on our homepage. Finally, we’ll launch fully later in the Fall. There’s still slots open for the 1.0 Private Beta, so sign up now if you’re interested.